For everyone

Orilleza pointed out that legal recognition is not a privilege but a right: “Lahat nang LGBTQIA+ [members] ay may karapatan na ma-recognize, and sana maipasa na talaga ‘yung SOGIESC bill, para maprotektahan din ‘yung mga tulad namin.”

Said Santos: “SOGIE makes sure that everyone will be included. Walang iwanan. Lahat kasama.”

Akbayan party list Rep. Perci Cendaña and incoming Rep. Chel Diokno called on lawmakers to stop delaying and produce legislation that would ensure equality and protection for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Cendaña expressed sadness that this year marks “the 25th anniversary” of the bill and that it continues to be ignored by lawmakers. He lamented the difficulty of coming out: “Hindi alam ng marami, napakakomplikado ng proseso ng coming out. Napakahirap para sa ating LGBTQIA+ people na lumabas at magpakilala dahil nga unsafe pa ang mundo. Marami pang stigma at discrimination.”

He challenged the other lawmakers to bring the issue forward: “Come out, dalhin sa liwanag at pagbotohan. Because all this beauty was never meant to be hidden. All this pride was never meant to be carried with shame. And all this love was never meant to be bound or broken.”

Diokno said he hoped that the progressive ordinances in Quezon City, such as the fair ordinance, QC Pride Council, and right to care card, will be made accessible nationwide.

Act of resistance

Ysang Barrera, who chairs the nonprofit Tinig ng Silangan (TNS) Inc. that helps marginalized communities, said Pride goes beyond the pageant of colorful outfits and is an act of resistance: “Lov3Laban—pure love, pure fight, genuine care, concern. It is a Pride March worth fighting for…It’s not just a statement. It’s not just costume. Parang, out, lahat ng mga gustong mag-out. But it’s
beyond that; it’s a protest that’s being fought by generations.”

Barrera cited “the beauty of the continuing fight” and the necessity of being loud and heard: “Sobrang ganda na pinagpapatuloy natin ‘yung laban. We will not be silenced by people trying to silence us. Ito ’yung opportunity natin na maging loud and mapakinggan din.”

The TNS booth theme followed “Multo” by Cup of Joe, their freedom wall serving as a platform for unheard voices and silent experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Although he was not among the performers, Vice Ganda showed up as a surprise guest. The movie-TV star stressed the importance of each one’s presence and the power of numbers: “Yung presensya ng bawat isa sa atin ay napakahalaga. Kaya ang aking panalangin sa bawat isa, sa lahat natin na bahagi ng komunidad na ito, let’s all make sure that we are seen. Please be seen. We have to be heard, so please be heard. Kailangan natin lumabas, makita, at mabilang dahil ang bilang natin ay kapangyarihan.”

The gay couple Santos and Orilleza were happy to see the growing support for their community. They recalled the very first Pride event they attended in 2013, when they saw fewer than 100 people. 

A “beautiful milestone” is how Orilleza described the steady growth of awareness of the community, as well as of the rights that its members are fighting for.

Jeremy Ballesteros, Hannah Tabunda and Orlaine Antonio, third year journalism students at the University of the Philippines’ College of Media and Communication, are interns at CoverStory.ph.

The post Celebrity-powered show caps LGBTQIA+ community festivities calling for equality appeared first on CoverStory.

The book, “When Things Don’t Go Your Way: Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times,” guides readers on how to navigate life’s challenges with grace and resilience.

Haemin emphasized the intrinsic value and worth of every individual regardless of their background, achievements, or circumstances during his talk at the UP Asian Center. He also signed his books during the event.

“Rather than thinking that you are insufficient or inadequate, you have to realize that it’s not true,” he said. “You don’t have to achieve something great to feel worthy. You are already worthy.”

Haemin was educated at the University of California in Berkeley, Harvard University and Princeton University in the United States and received monastic training from Haein monastery in South Korea. He taught Asian religions at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, for seven years and now resides in Seoul. 

His first book, “The Things You Can Only See When You Slow Down,” is a guide to mindfulness and a call to slow down amid the overwhelming demands of modern life. It has sold over three million copies and has been translated into more than 35 languages. 

His second, “Love for Imperfect Things,” published in 2020, challenges the need for perfection, and argues that it is only through acceptance of one’s flaws that someone can experience compassionate and fulfilling relationships. 

Haemin said life challenges and setbacks are opportunities for self-discovery and act as stepping stones for better things in life.

He also expressed his delight in visiting the Philippines and shared that it was his first time to eat bibingka, a local rice delicacy. He said he was excited to visit UP Diliman as one of his friends who studied at the university had told him great things about it.

He was welcomed by UP Korea Research Center’s Dr. Kyung Min Bae, UP Asian Center’s Dean Noel Moratilla and Prof. Michelle Palumbarit. Ingrid de Jesus, philosophy professor, served as moderator of the event.

The book tour was made possible by Fully Booked, in collaboration with UP Korea Research Center and UP Asian Center. —ROCHELLE LEONOR

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In what was dubbed “First Day Rage,” students, faculty members, workers, community residents and other sectors assembled on Jan. 21, the first day of classes for the second semester of academic year 2024–2025 at UP Diliman, for an outdoor forum on pressing issues concerning not only the university but also the nation. 

“The day highlights our issues as students and how we can perform our role as ‘Iskolar ng Bayan’ in confronting even bigger national issues,” UP Student Regent Francesca Duran said in Filipino at the forum held on the steps of Palma Hall. 

Rallies and assemblies were also held on UP campuses in Clark, Cebu, Manila and the Visayas in Iloilo on Jan. 20. UP Tacloban conducted a program on Jan. 17. 

“I think it’s the continuation of UP’s important role in mobilizing students that led eventually to the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. [in 1986]. We still seek to continue this tradition in UP to constantly mobilize students,” Duran said.

2025 budget 

The cut on education in the P6.326-trillion national budget of 2025 was discussed, and calls were raised for the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte and for the accountability of the Marcos family for alleged abuses. The assembly also criticized UP’s apparent thrust toward commercialization and the lack of student spaces and dorm slots.

Speaking in Filipino, Francezca Kwe, a professor and the vice president of the All UP Academic Employees Union chapter in Diliman, described the 2025 budget as “the most corrupted national budget.” She said “the budget was bloated due to the pork barrel and the CIF (confidential and intelligence funds) to be spent in the May elections.”   

The 2025 General Appropriations Act includes a P26-billion allocation for the Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program or Akap, which is expected to be used by politicians during the election campaign.  

Unprogrammed budget items worth P363.665 billion also raised concerns, such as the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Modernization Program. By definition, these do not get on-the-go funds but can only access their allocation if the government treasury records high revenue. 

Experts deem this year’s budget unconstitutional for its supposed violation of Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution, which states that education should receive the highest budget. 

According to the Department of Budget and Management, the education sector should receive P1.055 trillion, the highest among all sectors. But this allocation includes nontraditional academies such as the Philippine National Police Academy, Philippine Military Academy and Philippine Science High School System. Removing the amounts for these institutions from the total gives the education sector not more than P1 trillion, which is lower than the P1.114 trillion for the Department of Public Works and Highways. 

Jose Monfred Sy, a professor and leader of Contend-UP (or the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy-UP), lamented that educators have taken the brunt of insufficient pay and lack of facilities. 

Despite the consistent call for wage increases, the national government has instead granted a service recognition incentive (or SRI), a one-time grant worth P20,000 distributed to all regular, contractual or “casual” government employees before the end of 2024. 

This amount is insufficient, Kwe said. “What we demand is the increase in salaries of all teachers because the majority of our workers in the university are contractual,” she said. 

Duran pointed out that “in this present context where the university is facing so many crises, the national government has responded with a budget cut, intensifying manifestations of corruption, and lack of attention to basic social services.” 

UP’s budget for this year was cut by P2 billion, the biggest drop in the university allocation in nine years. 

Anticorruption network 

To expose the “systemic assault on the education sector and the broader public welfare under the Marcos administration,” faculty members, students, workers, community residents and other constituents have launched the UP Act Against Corruption Network (UP Action) as initiated by the Office of the UP Student Regent. 

“We the sectoral regents see it proper to unite the entire UP community, not just the students and faculty but everyone, in the fight against corruption and in calling for state responsibility and accountability,” Duran said. 

In a statement, UP Action sought the immediate impeachment of the Vice President and other Dutertes’ accountability for alleged crimes. Three impeachment complaints against the Vice President, filed on grounds of violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, and threatening President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., are pending in the House of Representatives. 

Congress is investigating her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, for supposed human rights violations arising from his administration’s “war on drugs.” Last Jan. 17, the human rights group Karapatan, along with relatives of victims of extrajudicial killings during the bloody antidrug campaign, filed a disbarment case against the former president at the Supreme Court. 

Rodrigo Duterte announced that  he was taking full legal and moral responsibility for the war on drugs during his appearances late last year at hearings in the Senate and the House.

UP Action also demanded accountability from President Marcos Jr. for his supposed “role in enabling corruption, impunity, and the systemic neglect of education and social services.”

The post ‘First Day Rage’ stirs UP campuses appeared first on CoverStory.

I can still remember the title of Ka Dodong’s paper: “The millenarian-populist aspects of Filipino Marxism.” I was amazed that we would be reading such a radical tract in an undergraduate class at Ateneo de Manila. I was so fascinated with it that I kept the copy. There were no PDFs then, and photocopies were expensive. Instead, we had mimeographed hard copies on cheap and coarse paper. But that copy is still in my archive of documents that I have accumulated through the years.

So, in my first encounters with Ka Dodong, he was either required or optional reading. I was already a “natdem” activist when I read, at my own risk, the vision document of Bisig, or the Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa, which he headed. 

UP president

Many years later I met Ka Dodong in person. He was then president of the University of the Philippines and I was a labor activist. It was my first time to be at the UP president’s office at the top of Quezon Hall, which has a commanding view of the sprawling campus. Being there must have changed Ka Dodong’s perspective in terms of, not shifting his pro-people and pro-student moorings, but what can be done to improve the university using the levers of power. I remember him saying he got flak from student activists then for his proposal to use UP’s idle land for commercial purposes to raise funds for advancing the quality of education.

It would be some time before I saw Ka Dodong again, at the so-called democratic left conference of representatives of political blocs and progressive individuals. The participants later established the original Laban ng Masa. I do not recall having a conversation with him then, but we all spoke at the conference about our different takes on the political situation and what was to be done. 

Such formal settings comprised the “second stage” of my encounters with Ka Dodong.

I envied my wife Mich who, as part of the Laban ng Masa secretariat during the tumultuous campaign for a transitional revolutionary government to replace Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, became close to Ka Dodong and his wife Princess. Mich told me of accompanying Ka Dodong to a bookstore to look for a volume, and of having coffee with the Nemenzos and talking about and dreaming of overhauling a broken system, not just ousting a corrupt president.

Informal meetings 

It was well after the heady years of Edsa Dos, Edsa Tres and Oust GMA that I had informal meetings with Ka Dodong. Several times during Noynoy Aquino’s administration, Ka Dodong asked to meet with Partido Manggagawa (PM) comrades for conversations. I guess he also did the same for leaders of other political groups. We usually met in a restaurant at UP Diliman to exchange notes on the political landscape.

He was still in the pink of health as he drove us around campus in his car. He was very interested in knowing about our practical work and the prospects of forging collaboration among various groups. But the changed political geography afforded few opportunities as the mass movement declined and “Edsa fatigue” deepened.

Still, Ka Dodong’s hopes for radical change did not falter. At the height of the labor dispute at Philippine Airlines (PAL) in the early 2010s, he invited a union leader to deliver a lecture to his undergraduate political science class. He asked me for an advance copy of the presentation as he did not want the class discussion to descend to sloganeering. The slide presentation did pass his exacting standards: He said Marx’s theory of surplus value and capitalist exploitation was appropriately explained through the real-life experience of the workers at PAL.

During Rodrigo Duterte’s term, comrades from some political groups gathered a few times at Ka Dodong’s house for late-night conversations. Among those present at the gatherings were PM leaders Rene Magtubo and Wilson Fortaleza. Nothing conspiratorial was hatched in those drinking sessions-cum-informal meetings; the only things we planned to topple were whiskey bottles. A striking aspect I remember was the gender imbalance in those meetings: Princess was the only female participant, but she more than held her ground. 

Up to that time, I did not consider my encounters with Ka Dodong as up close and personal. We were always in the company of other colleagues, and the topic of discussions was mostly political.

Personal conversations

Covid-19 was a game-changer in many ways, even if indirectly in my relationship with Ka Dodong. When face-to-face interactions resumed after the pandemic, he somehow learned that I was teaching at UP Diliman’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations and was also co-convenor of Ed Tadem’s Program on Alternative Development at UP’s Center for Integrative and Development Studies; he wanted to get together with me for one-on-one conversations. I think it must have been because I had one foot in the academe and the other in the activist movement. As others have said in their tributes to Ka Dodong, he thought well of activists who pursued their studies while continuing their advocacies. A public intellectual, he sought advocates who were grounded in both activism and scholarship. My wife Mich recounted that in one of their frank conversations over coffee, Ka Dodong said as much. 

Of course, I was honored to have a chance at private conversations with Ka Dodong, and also privileged to have some of those discussions with Princess who provided her own take on things. It is not surprising that while the Nemenzos shared much, especially socialist convictions, they had their own distinct opinions on certain issues. At times, I invited colleagues to join our meetings. Ka Dodong was very enthusiastic when I showed up accompanied by some young PM members.

In that “last stage” of my encounters with Ka Dodong, we covered a full spectrum of topics, from the life of a UP faculty member to the situation of the world. We talked about, for example, Joma Sison and Popoy Lagman, two revolutionaries that he deeply respected although in varying contexts, both having contributed to the theory and practice of waging revolution in the Philippines. Joma and Popoy remain the only two Filipinos whose works are in the Marxists Internet Archive. One day, I hope to see Ka Dodong’s name as the third Filipino in that authoritative online repository of works by renowned leftists.

I asked Ka Dodong about how it was during his younger days, especially when he and others were laying the ground for the eventual rise of the student movement in the late 1960s and the momentous task of rebuilding the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) after the Huk rebellion was put down in the mid-1950s. He told a lot of stories, some of them I already knew, but remarkably, many were new to me. I now regret not taking notes.

In their tributes to Ka Dodong, both Ed Tadem and Jojo Abinales mentioned Joma as recruiting Ka Dodong into the PKP. That may be so. But I distinctly recall Ka Dodong saying that the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), then the third largest communist party in the world, had sent one comrade to the Philippines with the mission of revitalizing the moribund PKP. I have forgotten his name, so I think of him as Tan Malaka 2.0. Ka Dodong was among this person’s first contacts at UP. But then, Ka Dodong forwarded Joma as the new contact person for the PKI to relate to, as he and Princess were on their way to Britain for graduate studies. Hopefully, historians will one day sort out the complete story.

Too few, too late

In our one-on-one conversations, Ka Dodong gave me a choice of coffee or whiskey. In the first few meetings, I modestly accepted coffee and told him it was too early to drink whiskey. I soon overcame my shyness and we drank whiskey even if the mid-afternoon sun was still shining brightly. 

I religiously brought food to our meetings. Ed Tadem had told me that Ka Dodong’s favorite was siopao from Ma Mon Luk. But it was too far away and I was able to get siopao only from a convenience store on campus. 

Eventually I would proceed to the Nemenzos’ house even empty-handed. They welcomed me anyway and graciously shared their food. On one occasion, I learned that another of Ka Dodong’s favorites was French onion soup; I gained from him how to differentiate the authentic soup from the wannabe. 

At times our discussions ended late at night and Ka Dodong would offer to lend me their car. I politely refused because I did not know how to drive. I did borrow an umbrella once when it was raining by the time I was ready to leave. Indeed, Ka Dodong and Princess, kind and thoughtful persons, offered help when needed.

I fondly remember those personal meetings with Ka Dodong. Looking back, I realize that they were too few and too late. When his health took a turn for the worse, I was able to visit him twice while he was confined at the Philippine General Hospital in the last quarter of 2024. It was heartbreaking to see him in ill health and unable to share his thoughts.

So, I prefer to recall the times when Ka Dodong was up and about and in the thick of things as a scholar-activist: at the one-on-one conversations and late-night meetings when his mind was sharp and focused; in the historic moments when he headed Laban ng Masa’s mass actions; on campus when he led movements for academic freedom and democratic governance (I saw the pictures at the All UP Workers Union office).

The last time I saw Ka Dodong in action was at a meeting where the publication of a book of his writings was discussed. I look forward to that project’s completion. Current and future generations will benefit from learning from his body of work. No doubt they will be fired by the same interest that gripped me when I first encountered him in one of his papers. 

In their engagement with his writings, Ka Dodong will remain alive.

Benjamin Velasco is an assistant professor at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations of UP Diliman. This piece is an expanded and translated version of a speech he delivered on Dec. 30, the last day of tributes for Francisco Nemenzo who passed on Dec. 19.

The post I remember Ka Dodong Nemenzo appeared first on CoverStory.

Yet, but for his contrarian disposition and his inborn disdain for the ordinary and the conventional, his life could have taken a different turn. Encouraged by his conservative parents, he entered the seminary after grade school at the age of 12. He could only stand a year of religious ideas and dogmas, and left abruptly. 

At the University of the Philippines, Dodong started voraciously reading Karl Marx and Frederich Engels while vainly trying to get the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) to be more open to progressive ideas. But he did meet the campus beauty and UPSCA leader Ana Maria “Princess” Ronquillo. They were also both with the University Student Council. True to his conviction that the personal and political go together, Dodong began his courtship of Princess by gifting her a copy of Engels’ “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” with the dedication: “That we may be of one heart and mind.” They got married soon after Dodong started teaching at the UP College of Public Administration. By then he had also turned into a thoroughly convinced atheist.

Dodong’s decision to be initially in “public administration” rather than “political science” unveiled his innate sense of propriety. His father, the eminent zoologist Francisco Nemenzo Sr., was then the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences where political science was taught. To avoid any conflict of interest or talk of favoritism, Dodong opted not to work under his father. When the time was right, he moved to the UP Political Science Department.

After earning his master’s degree in public administration at UP with a thesis on “The Land for the Landless Program of the Philippines,” Dodong secured a scholarship to do a PhD at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. In London, he first got involved with radical activists who were Trotskyists and anarchists but eventually gravitated towards the Communist Party of Great Britain. 

Comrades

At the same time, he started corresponding with the former UP firebrand Jose Ma. “Joma” Sison who was already a top cadre of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP). The PKP was then undergoing a revival and revitalization to overcome the decimations from the failed Huk rebellion of the late 1940s and early 1950s. At Manchester, Dodong secured his PhD with a dissertation on “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Burma and Malaya.” When Dodong returned to the Philippines in February 1965, Joma recruited him into the PKP. 

Thereafter a close friendship and comradeship flourished between them, with both being elevated as the youngest members of the PKP’s provisional central committee and, later, the Politburo. Their families bonded together and Dodong and Joma would have joint birthday celebrations, their natal days being a day apart. Princess also stood as godmother (ninang) to the Sisons’ second daughter while Joma was ninong to the Nemenzos’ second son.

In 1967, however, the two friends parted ways when Joma left the PKP to form a rival communist party. Dodong chose to stay on at the PKP, a decision he would later regret. As the new Maoist-oriented Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) swiftly expanded and attracted militant youth cadres, the PKP stagnated and fell behind, its Huk-era leaders adopting an overly cautious strategy, fearful of repeating the mistakes of the past and inviting reprisals from the state. Expectedly, conflicts, some turning violent, arose between the two communist parties. 

Dodong headed the PKP Education Department and recruited young student activists as his staff. They revived the party’s propaganda arm by publishing two newspapers in a party-acquired printing press and outing out regular position papers on national and international issues. Intensive education seminars and cadre training programs were also initiated. 

Martial law

When President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. declared martial law in September 1972, the PKP leadership argued that the new situation boded well for it as the main target of Marcos was the Maoist CPP. A party circular ordered its cadres to desist from engaging in armed warfare against Marcos and to continue the parliamentary form of struggle. 

At the Politburo, Dodong objected to this assessment and gathered urban-based activists and cadres to mount armed opposition to martial law in the cities. He resigned from UP and went underground. Deprived of a rural base to fall back on as the latter remained under the control of the PKP old guard, he soon realized the futility of his maverick moves. Worse, the PKP retaliated by declaring him and his group guilty of treason to the party followed by the abduction and execution of the dissident group’s top leaders after summary trials. Dodong managed to elude the same fate while stranded in a rural village in Central Luzon. Those assigned to eliminate him refused to follow the order and let him escape to Manila. Following this turn of events, he had no recourse but to cut his ties with the PKP. 

Dodong, however, would be apprehended by Marcos’ military in January 1973 and would spend almost two years in prison. Princess had joined him in the underground and was similarly arrested and incarcerated. After his release, Dodong was reinstated as a professor of political science at UP, where he devoted himself to teaching and research, imparting radical and socialist ideas to a generation known as “martial law babies.”

As a result of his PKP experience, he had adopted an unconventional and unorthodox approach to Marxism, rejecting a staid and uncreative application of Marx’s ideas and analyses of society and revolution, and critical of both the Soviet and Chinese models. Commenting on the splits and conflicts between various Philippine Left formations, he identified sectarianism and dogmatism as the bane of revolutionary movements everywhere. 

Academic life

As a professor, he was a favorite of students who were drawn to his revolutionary and heretical ideas on politics, society, and life in general. Moreover, he had an affable, generous and highly approachable personality that made students comfortable with him. For some reason, even his Visayan accent was attractive to some women students. In an FB post, a former student, Babeth Lolarga, wrote: “Francisco ‘Dodong’ Nemenzo Jr. was that memorable political science professor who made Marx and Lenin so palatable to us students that we were ready to march out with raised fists after his lecture or smack the first multinational corporation executive on the nose. That was how persuasive he was.”

Upon his return to academic life, Dodong was thrust into administrative work—first as dean of the then still unified College of Arts and Sciences, chancellor of the UP Visayas constituent university, faculty regent, and, in 1999, president of the UP System. As an academic leader, he championed academic freedom and autonomy, critical thinking, students’ rights and welfare, and resisted incursions of the martial law state into the academe. 

He recounted the interview for the UP presidency by the UP Board of Regents thus: “The Board of Regents—sitting en banc as the search committee—asked me point blank if it is true that I am a communist. I said, ‘Yes, with a small letter ‘c,’ meaning I remain a Marxist but I do not belong to the Communist Party of the Philippines or the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas. I had severed my ties with the latter. If elected president, I will take no orders from any external group. The university will be my singular concern.

“I refused to recant even if I no longer belonged to a communist party. I still believe that Marxism is the best framework for analyzing capitalism. It would be sheer opportunism to repudiate what I sincerely believe in just to get the presidency. But I would never use my authority as president to promote an ideology. The university should always be an arena for contending schools of thought. Throughout my incumbency I kept in mind that UP is a school operating in a capitalist system. To institute radical reforms in the university, that system must be wrecked; otherwise, the benighted forces of reaction will have the pretext for intruding into this refuge of free thought.” 

Upon the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., Dodong joined former senator Jose W. Diokno in establishing Kaakbay (Kilusan para sa Karapatan at Kalayaan ng Bayan), which formulated a democratic and nationalist alternative to martial law politics and economics. Liberal nationalist ideas, however, were beginning to sound inadequate in the aftermath of the Marcos dictatorship’s horrors and the complicity of the capitalist and ruling classes in maintaining an oppressive and exploitative system whether under martial law or the liberal democratic setup that succeeded Marcos.

Bisig 

Accordingly in late 1986, Dodong headed a group of Marxist activists who had left the CPP and PKP, independent leftists and left social democrats in establishing the socialist formation, Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa (Bisig), or “Union to Advance Socialist Thought and Deed.” The group characterized the Philippines as a capitalist society and argued that the socialist paradigm and program should now guide social movements for radical change. He was Bisig’s founding national chair. 

Dodong’s influence and his brand of political analyses resonated among not only leftwing circles but also reformist officers in the Philippine Armed Forces who sought his counsel and advice and conducted learning sessions with him on all topics related to Philippine and international politics. An unlikely friendship also grew between Dodong and Joseph “Erap” Estrada, when the latter was still a senator who opposed the presence of US military bases and continued until Erap became president of the Philippines. It is believed that Erap was instrumental in Dodong’s assumption of the UP presidency in 1999. 

In 2016, Dodong contracted bacterial meningitis that physically incapacitated him—relegating him to a wheelchair and 24-hour caregiver assistance. But his mental acuteness remained intact, and he continued to participate in forums and symposiums albeit with reduced speaking facilities. At the 100^th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 2017, he delivered a 2-part 4-hour lecture on the global significance of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia. At the Marx 200 lecture series in 2018, he gave a 3-hour lecture on the history of the socialist movement in the Philippines. In the 2022 presidential election, he gave unqualified support to the presidential and vice presidential candidacies of worker-leader Leody de Guzman and radical scholar Walden Bello whose electoral platform for a socialist Philippines was the first in the country. 

Dodong never fully recovered from his ailment. Over the years, his condition slowly deteriorated. After three hospital confinements in a span of three months in 2024, he passed away, leaving a legacy of principled and unswerving commitment and action to the cause of the working classes, the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized, and lasting hope for a better and humane world for all. 

The family of Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo has announced that the memorial service in his honor will be held on Dec. 27-30, 2 p.m.-12 midnight, at the GT-Toyota Asian Center Auditorium, UP Diliman. Here is the tribute program schedule: Dec. 27, 7 p.m., UP community; Dec. 28, 7 p.m., family and friends; Dec. 29, 7 p.m., Solidarity Night with comrades and friends; Dec. 30, 7 p.m., final farewell open to all friends and family.  For inquiries, contact Annika Nemenzo Hernandez at 0917-6275539.

The post The uncommon life and struggles of Francisco ‘Dodong’ Nemenzo appeared first on CoverStory.

It was pure as pure could be: UP is the champion of UAAP Season 87 men’s basketball!

Exhibiting both depth and grit, it was an epic struggle between the two current titans of Philippine collegiate basketball: the University of the Philippines (UP) Fighting Maroons and the De La Salle University Green Archers. 

It was Game 3 on Dec. 15, and like any other evenly matched struggle, the contest was not decided until the final buzzer sounded.

All throughout, it was basagan ng mukha, balyahan and asawahan, to use street lingo to describe the very physical game that culminated the rivalry two years in the making. Players were wrestling on the floor for the ball, falling and grimacing in pain after absorbing wayward elbows and flailing arms, bouncing off full body charges, limping away, and cramping up.

It was not even supposed to reach Game 3. It should have ended with Game 2, but La Salle survived by a hairline 76-75 edge because UP was less steady down that stretch. Now, there was no room to slacken, no excuse to flinch. It was do or die.

As he did in Game 2, La Salle head coach Topex Robinson did not begin with his best player, power forward Kevin Quiambao, in order to have the two big guys Michael Phillips and Henry Agunanne start and establish inside dominance early on. While it worked in Game 2, the adjustment may have led to pulling out Quiambao and subsequently not being able to reinsert him early enough during Game 3’s fourth-quarter closing minutes when the game was still in the balance. Nevertheless, even when on court, Quiambao was often locked down by the UP defense and had few scoring opportunities.

Right after tipoff, UP cranked up its offense in an effort to put the game away early. Employing fast breaks that La Salle tried to counter with full court presses and traps, UP attempted to score quickly with every possession. The intensity was at its height when UP was able to build a 14-point lead in the third quarter, with Gerry Abadiano racking up 7 straight points. (It was Abadiano who could have won Game 2 when he took a last-second heave—that missed.) But then, led by Quiambao, La Salle’s 3-pointers started falling and Phillips scored at will, enabling La Salle to pull abreast at 56-56 early in the fourth quarter. That’s when the UP triumvirate of Quentin Millora-Brown, JD Cagulangan and Francis Lopez combined for 8 points to pull ahead and give UP the cushion it needed. Lopez’s final 3-pointer was the dagger to La Salle’s heart and his shot to full redemption after his 4 missed free throws and turnover that enabled La Salle to hang on in Game 2.

UP did not reach the level of success it now commands in men’s basketball overnight. It was not even years. It was decades. There was a time when UP was the cellar-dweller in the Universities Athletic Association of the Philippines. It was so bad that finally winning a game after 27 straight losses merited a bonfire at UP’s Sunken Garden, apparently because a single win was just as hard to come by as a championship. (Of course, there was a roaring bonfire at the Sunken Garden on Dec. 16.)

Now everyone is all praise and thankful for the support of alumni, sponsors, the school administration and the entire UP community to afford a basketball program that attracts top-notch coaching and nurtures talented players.

Over the past four seasons, UP won the championship in the first, placed a close second (losing in Game 3s) to Ateneo de Manila University and La Salle in the second and third, and claimed dominance once more in the fourth. Not bad in a league where UP is the only state university and all the others are the country’s top private universities. It is, hopefully, a dynasty in the making.

“Is it the players or the coach?” my wife said when I gleefully shared the news that UP had won. She was wondering who was responsible for the victory and was voicing the basketball version of the “Is it the chicken or the egg” question. “The players,” I said. Actually, “both” would have been a fair answer, but that would not have sat well with her, as she does not like me taking a noncommittal stance.

In a sporting world where the level of competition is so high that victory is determined by a split second or the “breaks of the game,” the way basketball is, the winning edge is often determined by mental toughness and the all-consuming desire to win. “Second is bottom. Second is last,” I vaguely remember some win-obsessed movie character saying.

UP’’s coach, the aptly named Goldwin Monteverde, underlined the importance of mental toughness when he told his team: “Walang bibitaw. Let’s not stop. Just keep pounding.” Game adjustments were no longer paramount. It was mindset. Clearly, it is true that the formula for success is “99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.” That 1% is the mental toughness that provides the winning edge. 

Put in the drills, the hard work, and they will all bear fruit. Or not. As the player executes, there is no time for thought. Hit or miss. Win or lose. Play ball!

Read more: UP admin and University Council still at odds on UP-AFP accord

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More than a month since the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) signed a “declaration of cooperation” (DOC) to conduct joint strategic research, and even before the first research topic was announced, the University Council (UC) of UP Diliman put its foot down on the accord.

In a statement issued on Sept. 25, the university’s highest academic policymaking body composed of professors of all ranks of the largest unit in the UP System called the DOC an “assault on the independence of our university and on academic freedom.”

“We challenge President Angelo A. Jimenez to show his wisdom and faithfulness to the university’s mandate by nullifying the declaration of cooperation with the AFP,” it said. (See https://tinyurl.com/24drvsj8)

In an interview on Oct. 7 with CoverStory.ph, Jimenez gave no sign that he would back down, but said he was still open to dialogue with various sectors in UP.  He said the university should “never fear to engage.”  

The UC said the university administration committed the entire UP System to working with the AFP without prior consultation with its constituents despite the military’s decades-long adversarial stance toward UP.

It said the DOC “whitewashes the escalating repression in UP and other educational institutions” which had been done through Red-tagging, enforced disappearances and harassment of student, faculty and staff leaders.

“A declaration of cooperation sends all the wrong messages: that UP can serve as a think tank for the military and that the goals of UP and the AFP can be in ‘strategic alignment,’” the UC said. “Militarization is fundamentally incompatible with a free public university.”

The UC statement was prepared in time for the Sept. 26 meeting of the 11-member Board of Regents (BOR), the university’s main policymaking body.

Caught by surprise

Faculty regent Carl Marc Ramota, an assistant professor of political science at UP Manila and former chair of All UP Academic Employees Union, said the university was caught by surprise because the DOC was made public by the AFP on Aug. 8, ahead of an official announcement by UP.

Ramota said that during a BOR meeting on Aug. 30, he raised the DOC as a “policy question,” and the regents recommended further discussions with UP constituents.

The UP authorities should listen to the University Council, he said, adding: “At the end of the day, the university is an academic institution.”

During a dialogue on Sept. 16 between representatives of various student, faculty and staff organizations, and Jimenez and other university officials, the administration made no commitment to rescind the declaration, insisting that “the document remained sound,” according to Ramota.

In a statement on Sept. 26, the UP administration indicated that it was unmoved by the UC’s position.

While it reiterated that the DOC was “non-binding and exploratory,” it said the arrangement would also be “beneficial precisely because it provides a framework for the University to share its knowledge and expertise towards contributing to the broader advocacy for security sector reform in our country.”

The DOC is intended to “provide a framework for cooperation between the AFP and UP in order to foster the development of possible collaborative projects and activities in the field of strategic studies through research, publication, training,” and conferences and visits.

The research projects would be jointly conducted by the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) and the AFP’s Office of Strategic Studies and Strategy Management (OSSSM).

Each side could solicit articles for publication in either the Philippine Journal of Public Policy of the CIDS or the Quarterly Digest of the OSSSM.

‘Based on fear’

Speaking with CoverStory.ph, Jimenez said the opposition to the DOC is “based on fear,” which he granted has some roots in “history.”

But he does not want UP “to move based on fear,” he said. “I want us to move based on our commitment, our courage.” 

Jimenez also said the university cannot not “engage” with the military as both UP and the AFP are public institutions. “We will not engage out of fear, but we should never fear to engage,” he said. “And it is UP’s opportunity to influence the thinking of a national security establishment.” 

Being openly engaged with other institutions but not with the military is “unjustified exceptionalism,” according to Jimenez. He cited the difference between the institution and individual acts committed by its people—or between the AFP and human rights violations by particular soldiers and officers.

Dr. Leo Cubillan, UP vice president for academic affairs who signed the DOC on behalf of Jimenez, told CoverStory that there was no need to consult “everyone” as those who would be involved in the research are the experts from CIDS and OSSSM.

“There’s always independence and autonomy in terms of research content. Hindi talaga po siya kasama sa consultation (That’s really not included in the consultation),” Cubillan said.

But for policymaking, all stakeholders would have to be consulted, he said.

He explained that since CIDS is directly under the UP System, and not a part of a particular UP unit like Diliman, such an agreement would have to be approved and signed by the UP president himself as the top official of the entire university.

Cubillan, an ophthalmologist who was deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, said the DOC is a broad memorandum of understanding, one of over 350 between UP and other entities, including those abroad.

Specific research would have to be governed by a memorandum of agreement. If one side disagrees with the terms, no research will be possible, he said.

‘Common practice’

Such joint university-military research projects are a “common practice” especially in the United States, between the Pentagon and top schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, according to Temario Rivera, the late retired chair of UP’s Department of Political Science who headed the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.

“In our case, it is not as prominent because in the past, perhaps, there was no necessity,” Rivera said in an interview with CoverStory about a month before his death on Sept. 18.

He acknowledged that “the elephant in the room is the perception that the military is an oppressive institution,” which complicates the possibility of engagement.

Rivera, an activist teacher who was incarcerated for five years during the Marcos martial law regime, said that “in theory and practice, there is no reason why UP should not engage the military in these kinds of activities, especially if we see that they could help the country.”

He proposed two immediate research topics—the South China Sea conflict and the resolution of the more-than-half-a-century-old communist insurgency.

“Isn’t that very important? In fact, we should influence the military that they should not be stuck with a military-driven response to the [maritime] crisis,” Rivera said.

He said UP could make a very important contribution to the peace process: Its “comparative research insights” on its success in other countries, but not in the Philippines, would be very helpful to the resolution of the armed conflict.

For the military, the peace process is not urgent, according to Rivera. “That is another reason why we should impress on them the urgency of research on the peace process because how can we effectively respond to an external threat if an internal threat remains on the ground?” he said. To achieve a “unified national response” to an external threat, he added, “we should find a way to finally resolve” the insurgency problem.

Insensitivity

Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a professor emerita of UP Diliman who has a PhD in psychology, said that as a national university, UP should provide expertise for the national good.

The former dean of the UP College of Social Work and Community Development, who is also a medical doctor and outspoken feminist, welcomes policymakers who listen to experts in making plans and programs. But what bothers her about the DOC is that “it doesn’t have sensitivity” to the history of UP and its “difficult relationship” with the military.

Claudio is particularly piqued by the lack of consultation with the UP community prior to the making of the declaration. Those involved in crafting the DOC did not realize that it would be difficult to implement after skipping that process, she said.

The document itself is “innocuous” except for the clause that keeps everything confidential. “But you don’t sign a piece of paper like that without paying attention to the context of the two institutions,” she said. “We have been angry with each other for decades, we have been adversarial for decades, and suddenly we agree to research together when battle lines are still drawn?”

Claudio supports a “productive dialogue” with the military, but within the proper historical context.

“We do want that,” she said. “But if you ignore the context, the issues at hand, the deep resentment of large sections of the university with the military that goes back to 50 years or more, how can you say that you made an agreement that would start a productive dialogue?”

In its statement on Sept. 26, the UP administration said it was taking “the sentiments of the University Council of Diliman into serious consideration as we work on potential areas of critical collaboration with the peace and development sector that will ensure the primacy of human rights and academic freedom.”

The University Councils of the other UP units have not yet responded to this issue.

Both substance and optics

Sol Iglesias, assistant professor of political science, expressed the concern of the UP faculty about “both the substance and the optics” of the DOC, saying it could be interpreted as “turning a blind eye” to human rights violations by the military that had “disproportionately targeted” UP over the years.

“There’s not even a word of general concern over human rights,” Iglesias said. “This agreement has probably fewer benefits to the university than it has to sort of burnish the image and reputation of the AFP. It looks like rapprochement.”

In their statement, the UC members said they have nothing against faculty and scholars engaging with private or public entities as individuals, and that the military is free to access the university’s publicly available research products.

These individual research initiatives are “well-defined in scope” and do not need a “broad declaration of institutional cooperation,” the UC members said.

Iglesias said that if UP does not withdraw from the DOC, ethical questions would arise concerning UP-AFP research projects, given all the issues raised against it.

Julius Lustro, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and fluid mechanics, said the DOC is unheard of.

“Where in the world have we seen a university, which takes pride in its tradition of academic freedom and social criticism, sign a ‘declaration of cooperation’ with the military?” Lustro said in a statement during a press conference following the disclosure of the DOC.

Literature and creative writing professor Rommel Rodriguez, who has been Red-tagged, denounced Jimenez for “betraying the long history and tradition” of UP as an academic institution that advances human rights and academic freedom, as well as the cloud of secrecy over the DOC.

“Is this scholarship or intelligence work?” Rodriguez said. “Is this for the interest of the UP community or the AFP?”

Journalism professor Danilo Arao expressed doubts over the quality of scholarship that the AFP could contribute to any joint research with the UP.

“If the institution is a purveyor of disinformation, how can you expect genuine scholarship to happen?” Arao said.

At the time the University Council of UP Diliman issued its statement against the DOC, more than 1,300 people had already signed a petition demanding that Jimenez withdraw from the declaration. The petition-signing has continued, with 1,371 signatories so far, according to Rodriguez.

Read more: Sure, let’s discuss so-called ‘grade inflation’

The post UP admin and University Council still at odds on UP-AFP accord appeared first on CoverStory.

With the 2024 Nobel Prize hailing the scientific breakthroughs that made artificial intelligence (AI) technology possible, the University of the Philippines has gathered experts for a conference underscoring AI’s profound impact on society, modern science, and the research community. 

“AI Horizons PH ’24: Conference on AI-Powered Research and Innovation” scheduled on Oct. 24 and 25 at the UP-BGC campus in Taguig City will also highlight AI-driven solutions to address the Philippines’ unique challenges in food security, sustainable agriculture, quality education, good governance, materials and energy, and health and wellness. 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Nobel Committee recently honored physicist John Hopfield and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton for their “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

It underlined how Hopfield’s work in associative memory and Hinton’s contributions to deep learning had laid the groundwork for today’s AI revolution, from language translation to image recognition and beyond.

“The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics shows that investing in AI is not just an option but an imperative for our nation’s future,” UP president Angelo A. Jimenez said. “As one of the world’s most prestigious science awards recognized AI’s global significance, UP has been taking concrete steps to harness its power for national progress.”

Gisela P. Concepcion, UP’s special adviser to the president on research and innovation, drew parallels between the Nobel-winning work and UP’s initiative: “The breakthroughs recognized by the Nobel Prizes—from fundamental machine learning to protein structure prediction—demonstrate AI’s potential to accelerate discovery and innovation across all fields.  

“Just as Hopfield and Hinton laid the foundations for modern AI, UP aims to lay the groundwork for AI-driven national development,” Concepcion said, adding: “This conference is our step towards positioning the Philippines at the forefront of AI innovation in Southeast Asia.”

The conference chair, Prospero Naval Jr. of the UP Diliman Department of Computer Science, said the organizers “aim to ignite AI transformation in our country, championing a vision where AI is integrated into everything and made accessible to everyone.”

Peter Sy, UP assistant vice president for digital transformation, said “AI’s transformative potential hinges on our commitment to digital infrastructure and data-driven strategies across all sectors.”

AI’s pivotal role in many sectors will be discussed during the two-day conference. Confirmed keynote speakers per track include Education Secretary Sonny Angara, Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte, Agriculture Undersecretary Allan Q. Umali, Health Undersecretary Glenn Matthew Baggao, and Executive Director Enrico Paringit of the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Industry, Energy. 

The speakers for AI in Food, Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries are: UP scientist and professor Maria Victoria Ortega Espaldon (“Smarter Approaches to Reinvigorate Agriculture as an Industry in the Philippines”), Homer Pantua of the Institute of Biological Sciences and BioAssets (“AI-Guided Approach to Livestock Vaccine Design and Development”), UP Marine Science Institute Director Laura David (“Fish-I for Fisheries Biodiversity, Aquaculture, and Fisheries”),  De La Salle University professor and NAST academician Elmer Dadios (“Automated Agriculture Machinery”), and Lowell Sy of Precision Path Technologies Inc. (“Path Precisions Technology Drones”). 

For AI in Education and Governance: Naval (“Data Science and AI: UP Degree Programs and Short Courses”), Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences professor Maria Mercedes Rodrigo (“AI in Education”), UP Diliman College of Science Dean Giovanni Tapang (“Versatile Instrumentation System for Science and Research”), UP Diliman professorial lecturer Romeo Gabriel Solis (“Tanza Child Development Centre”), and UP Diliman National Institute of Physics professor May Lim (“AI in Traffic and Road Systems”). 

For AI in Materials and Energy: Philippine Space Agency Director-General Joel Joseph Marciano Jr. (“Role of Artificial Intelligence in Space Technology”), Governor’s Chair professor at University of Tennessee-Tickle College of Engineering Rigoberto Advincula (“Advanced Manufacturing and Chemical Industries”), Advanced Science and Technology Institute Director Franz de Leon (“AI Initiatives of ASTI”), UP Diliman Engineering Research Development for Technology project leader Roel Ocampo (“High Performance Computing for AI”), and Lea Bronuela-Ambrocio, Prototype Automated Visual Survey Equipment project leader, UP Diliman National Institute of Civil Engineering (“AI in Transportation”). 

For AI in Health and Wellness (Mental, Physical, Socio-Cultural): NAST academician and UP professor emeritus Antonio Miguel Dans (“AI assisted UHC/PMC electronic records”), UP Philippine Genome Center Executive Director Felicitas S. Lacbawan (“AI in Molecular Diagnostics and Genetics”), radiology professor Johanna Patricia Cañal at UP Manila and Philippine General Hospital (“AI in Radiology”), associate orthopedics professor Nathaniel Orillaza Jr. at UP Manila and PGH (“AI in Orthopedics”), and Iris Thiele Isip Tan of the Medical Informatics Unit, UP College of Medicine (“Mental Wellness and AI”).  

UP vice president for academic affairs Leo Cubillan, MD, and UP Diliman chancellor Carlo Vistan will deliver the closing remarks for Days 1 and 2 of the conference, respectively. 

More information and registration details at  https://ai-horizons.up.edu.ph/

Read more: A meditation on technology and humanity

The post UP-organized conference on AI to showcase cutting-edge applications in critical sectors appeared first on CoverStory.

In a statement issued on Sept. 25, the university’s highest academic policymaking body composed of professors of all ranks of the largest unit in the UP System called the DOC an “assault on the independence of our university and on academic freedom.”

“We challenge President Angelo A. Jimenez to show his wisdom and faithfulness to the university’s mandate by nullifying the declaration of cooperation with the AFP,” it said. (See https://tinyurl.com/24drvsj8)

The UC said the university administration committed the entire UP System to working with the AFP without prior consultation with its constituents despite the military’s decades-long adversarial stance toward UP.

It said the DOC “whitewashes the escalating repression in UP and other educational institutions” through Red-tagging, enforced disappearances and harassment of student, faculty and staff leaders.

“A declaration of cooperation sends all the wrong messages: that UP can serve as a think tank for the military and that the goals of UP and the AFP can be in ‘strategic alignment,’” the UC said. “Militarization is fundamentally incompatible with a free public university.”

The UC statement was prepared in time for the Sept. 26 meeting of the 11-member Board of Regents (BOR), the university’s main policymaking body.

Caught by surprise

Faculty regent Carl Marc Ramota, an assistant professor of political science at UP Manila and former chair of All UP Academic Employees Union, said the university was caught by surprise because the DOC was made public by the AFP on Aug. 8, ahead of an official announcement by UP.

Ramota said that during a BOR meeting on Aug. 30, he raised the DOC as a “policy question,” and the regents recommended further discussions with UP constituents.

The UP authorities should listen to the University Council, he said, adding: “At the end of the day, the university is an academic institution.”

During a dialogue on Sept. 16 between representatives of various student, faculty and staff organizations and Jimenez and other university officials, the administration made no commitment to rescind the declaration, insisting that “the document remained sound,” according to Ramota.

In a statement on Thursday (Sept. 16), the UP administration indicated that it was unmoved by the UC’s position.

While it reiterated that the DOC was “non-binding and exploratory,” it said the arrangement would also be “beneficial precisely because it provides a framework for the University to share its knowledge and expertise towards contributing to the broader advocacy for security sector reform in our country.”

The DOC is intended to “provide a framework for cooperation between the AFP and UP in order to foster the development of possible collaborative projects and activities in the field of strategic studies through research, publication, training,” and conferences and visits.

The research projects would be jointly conducted by the UP Center for Integrative  and Development Studies (UP CIDS) and the AFP’s Office of Strategic Studies and Strategy Management (OSSSM).

In addition to joint research, each side could solicit articles for publication in either the Philippine Journal of Public Policy of the CIDS or the Quarterly Digest of the OSSSM.

‘Common practice’

Such joint university-military research projects are a “common practice” especially in the United States, between the Pentagon and top schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, according to Temario Rivera, the late retired chair of UP’s Department of Political Science who headed the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.

“In our case, it is not as prominent because in the past, perhaps, there was no necessity,” Rivera said in an interview with CoverStory.ph about a month before his death on Sept. 18.

He acknowledged that “the elephant in the room is the perception that the military is an oppressive institution,” which complicates the possibility of engagement.

Rivera, an activist teacher who was incarcerated for five years during the Marcos martial law regime, said that “in theory and practice, there is no reason why UP should not engage the military in these kinds of activities, especially if we see that they could help the country.”

He proposed two immediate research topics—the South China Sea conflict and the resolution of the more-than-half-century-old communist insurgency.

“Isn’t that very important? In fact, we should influence the military that they should not be stuck with a military-driven response to the [maritime] crisis,” Rivera said.

He said UP could make a very important contribution to the peace process: Its “comparative research insights” on its success in other countries but not in the Philippines would be very helpful to the resolution of the armed conflict.

For the military, the peace process is not urgent, according to Rivera. “That is another reason why we should impress on them the urgency of research on the peace process because how can we effectively respond to an external threat if an internal threat remains on the ground?” he said. To achieve a “unified national response” to an external threat, he added, “we should find a way to finally resolve” the insurgency problem.

Insensitivity

Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a professor emerita of UP Diliman who has a PhD in psychology, said that as a national university, UP should provide expertise for the national good.

The former dean of the UP College of Social Work and Community Development, who is also a medical doctor and outspoken feminist, said she welcomes policymakers who listen to experts in making plans and programs. But what bothers her about the DOC is that “it doesn’t have sensitivity” to the history of UP and its “difficult relationship” with the military.

Claudio is particularly piqued by the lack of consultation with the UP community prior to the making of the declaration. Those involved in crafting the DOC did not realize that it would be difficult to implement after skipping that process, she said.

The document itself is “innocuous” except for the clause that keeps everything confidential, Claudio said. “But you don’t sign a piece of paper like that without paying attention to the context of the two institutions. We have been angry with each other for decades, we have been adversarial for decades, and suddenly we agree to research together when battle lines are still drawn?”

Claudio supports a “productive dialogue” with the military, but within the proper historical context.

“We do want that,” she said. “But if you ignore the context, the issues at hand, the deep resentment of large sections of the university with the military that goes back to 50 years or more, how can you say that you made an agreement that would start a productive dialogue?”

In its statement on Thursday, the UP administration said it was taking “the sentiments of the University Council of Diliman into serious consideration as we work on potential areas of critical collaboration with the peace and development sector that will ensure the primacy of human rights and academic freedom.”

The University Councils of the other UP units have not yet responded to this issue.

Both substance and optics

Sol Iglesias, assistant professor of political science, expressed the concern of the UP faculty about “both the substance and the optics” of the DOC, saying it could be interpreted as “turning a blind eye” to human rights violations by the military that had “disproportionately targeted” UP over the years.

“There’s not even a word of general concern over human rights,” Iglesias said. “This agreement has probably fewer benefits to the university than it has to sort of burnish the image and reputation of the AFP. It looks like rapprochement.”

In their statement, the UC members said they have nothing against faculty and scholars engaging with private or public entities as individuals, and that the military is free to access the university’s publicly available research products.

These individual research initiatives are “well-defined in scope” and do not need a “broad declaration of institutional cooperation,” the UC members said.

Iglesias said that if UP does not withdraw from the DOC, ethical questions would arise concerning UP-AFP research projects, given all the issues raised against it.

Julius Lustro, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and fluid mechanics, said the DOC is unheard of.

“Where in the world have we seen a university, which takes pride in its tradition of academic freedom and social criticism, sign a ‘declaration of cooperation’ with the military?” Lustro said in a statement during a press conference last month.

Literature and creative writing professor Rommel Rodriguez, who has been Red-tagged, denounced Jimenez for “betraying the long history and tradition” of UP as an academic institution that advances human rights and academic freedom, as well as the cloud of secrecy over the DOC.

“Is this scholarship or intelligence work?” Rodriguez said. “Is this for the interest of the UP community or the AFP?”

Journalism professor Danilo Arao expressed doubt over the quality of scholarship that the AFP could contribute to any joint research with the UP.

“If the institution is a purveyor of disinformation, how can you expect genuine scholarship to happen?” Arao said.

According to Rodriguez, who is also vice president for faculty of the All UP Academic Employees Union and a member of the Defend UP Network, a petition to rescind the DOC has been signed by 1,344 people as of Sept. 25.

The UP president and the AFP spokesperson have yet to agree to requests for an interview. This report will be updated when they do so. —ED.

Read more: Sure, let’s discuss so-called ‘grade inflation’

The post UP University Council thumbs down declaration of cooperation between UP and AFP appeared first on CoverStory.

Ricalde’s early interest in photography began when an uncle, a member of the US Navy, gifted him with a Kodak instamatic camera when he was eight or nine years old. Initially, he took pictures of family members, and he recalled that his mother always insisted on having flowers as her background. As early as then, he believed that a photograph should not have too many distractions. 

While enrolled as a scholar at the Manila Science High School, he bought his books at the then Alemar’s Bookstore and passed a camera shop on Raon Street and Rizal Avenue. He stopped to gaze at a Minolta SRT 101 model. “Someday I will buy that!” he swore to himself.

He described his family as poor, and said he saved his scholarship funds toward buying the camera: “Mahirap lang kami. Inipon ko yung scholarship money para paglaanan sa camera.” He turned over his savings to his parents with the view that he could ask for it when it was time to make the momentous purchase Long story short, his money was used to pay for household expenses and utilities, and that was the end of his first dream.

When Ricalde entered college at the University of the Philippines Diliman, breaktime would find him at the Main Library reading copies of National Geographic. He closely studied the pictures, blissfully unaware that it was a magazine famed for its photographs. He said that whenever he saw a copy of the magazine, he’d look through its pages: “Binubuklat ko.”

After graduation, his first job was as the first Filipino systems analyst of Brunei Shell Petroleum. From the money he saved, his first purchase was a Canon AE1, an SLR with exchangeable lenses. He called it a “high-end, full-blown camera.”

His formal photography experience started in November-December 1981 when he became a leading photo enthusiast in Brunei. He helped put up the Brunei Shell Recreation Club Photographic Club and he and the other members organized contests in the company and in the entire country. He won more than 10 trophies, but there was no prize money involved.

He was often asked if he had studied under professional photographers. It was then that he was able to prove to himself that he has a natural talent in photography, he said. “The day before a photo walk, I imagine in my head what pictures I would take. I upgraded equipment to a Nikon F3HP with different lenses. I used them until the 1990s.”

In 1994, Ricalde decided to become an entrepreneur in his own country. He put up a business that made IT solutions for local government units, the national government, and the private sector. He also did geographic information systems or mapping. Among the other things that fulfilled him was developing the online examination system for the Philippine Regulatory Board (except law, which is administered by the Supreme Court).

He was also able to do an iPhone application called Maps—similar to Waze and Google Maps—apart from other contributions to the computer systems in the country.

But how and why did he get involved in taking pictures of mass actions? Ricalde said he entered UP in 1971 at the height of the First Quarter Storm. Immediately he became an activist, but he was not able to record anything in pictures. “Wala akong nakuhang litrato. I had no camera yet.”

When he was already employed, he timed his visits to the Philippines every August of each year because of the protest demonstrations. “Kasagsagan ng mass actions from 1982 up to 1989. Naabutan ko ang Ninoy Aquino killing [on Aug. 21, 1983]. Lagi kong nakikita si Madame Cory [Aquino, Ninoy’s widow] sa Cojuangco Building sa Makati.”

He said he remains a low-profile photographer. “None of my pictures have been sold or are intended to be sold,” he said. “But I’ve held photo workshops. I photograph for the people.”

He explained the last sentence as an intent to portray what is occurring in the country and the distinctive personalities working for the freedom of Filipinos: “Ibig sabihin naglalayon na makita ang nangyayari sa bansa at mga natatanging tao na tumutulong sa ating pagpapalaya.”

Ricalde had his first photography show, titled “Slices of Time,” at Gimenez Gallery in UP Diliman. He was told that he may be the first graduate of the UP College of Engineering to exhibit officially on campus. His subjects covered all the genres that he has gone through: street photography, portraiture, still life, mass action, etc.

As for his daily routine when he is carrying his camera, he said, “Photography is now available on our mobile phones. I use it as such for daily activities, but for special events, like when I see Palestinian refugees gathered at Rizal Park, I bring my camera.”

He is a big admirer of Sebastião Salgado, the Brazilian photographer and photojournalist who has documented indigenous people, miners, and workers in situ. “I also want to specialize in social documentary,” he said, the way Salgado did it. What basic tips can he offer those who want to take pictures seriously? He said they must feel the image, learn the fundamentals: “Kailangan sa photographer, maramdaman yung image. Matutong mag-visualize before taking pictures. Ang basic compositional elements, dapat matutunan.”

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